He’s a clever man, that Rives. I love how he makes poetry cool. Next year, I’m teaching Year 10 English, and I’ll be trying very hard to find a way to weave some of Rive’s work into our course. This year, we had a slam poetry event during Book Week, and I was blown away by some of the poetry created by individuals and groups of students. I strongly believe that poetry surrounds us every day, in the lyrics of songs, in the word pictures we paint every day in conversation. It’s about active listening and appreciation of the beauty in our everyday lives.
Seek some beauty in your everyday life this weekend. When you find it, savour it. If you can, spread it around. I saw something beautiful tonight. My god-daughter’s dance concert, made all the more special by the presence of the lone little boy dancing his heart out. Even though at one stage he was wearing a puffy shirt reminiscent of that Seinfeld episode, he rose above it and exuded sheer beauty as he gave it his all. I clapped with extra enthusiasm at the end of each performance; I was applauding his bravery, his willingness to embrace what he loves doing, even if he is the solitary male in a troupe of female dancers. He was poetry in motion.
Enjoy your weekend everyone. I hope it’s filled with moments to savour. : )
Last night, I went to a free screening of Connected, An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology. Thanks Hamish Curry for organising the event. The film’s creator is Tiffany Shlaine, and she is someone well versed in the workings of the web. Tiffany founded the Webby awards fifteen years ago, but today concentrates her efforts on film-making. Interestingly, for me anyway, her film echoed a lot of my thinking about the nature of being connected.
I’ve mentioned, more than a few times here, the transformational effect being connected has had on my life. There is little doubt in my mind that I am richer for it, in a soulful sense, certainly not monetary! I feel energised when I’m learning new things from all the network nodes I’m connected to. I know how easy it is to lose yourself in the Twitter stream, but also how enriched you can feel when your brain is firing and possibilities are stretching out before you. What comes with this is the desire to stay on top of things, to be ahead of change. You quickly realise this is impossible, that you would need to be looking at a device 24/7 and even then you wouldn’t have a hope of covering everything that is happening.
Tiffany begins the film with an anecdote, featured at the beginning of this trailer.
Hey, I’ve been there. Some would stay I’ve never left that state. But I know better. In my early days of immersion, I’d sit amongst friends in conversation and find my mind wandering. The desire to switch on my phone and check my networks was intense, almost like a primal need. I found myself connected to the network, and disconnected from long term friends, even family. It seemed that they didn’t understand, they weren’t part of what was in my immediate field of interest. None of them grasped the magnitude of my new discovery.
In that state, I longed for opportunities to find real time face to face meet ups with the people in my network, and I thought I would find myself content in their presence. While that was true with some people, what I also discovered was that many of the people I met were distant, introspective, or even people who just weren’t all that friendly face to face. What is obvious to me now but wasn’t then is that my network mirrored real life. It is a human network, populated with all variants of the human condition.
This year, I have been conflicted. I made a conscious decision to back off with my immersion. I still truly value my network, and continue to find it the place where I am energised and excited about possibilities. But what I have found is that I have reconnected with those in my immediate sphere, my close friends and family. I value the time I spend with them, and remain present for longer periods than I did in the past. The sky hasn’t fallen, my connection with an already established network is still strong, and I feel more at peace with my world.
Like Tiffany’s tale, it was a watershed moment that led to me resetting priorities. When you face adversity, true friends and connections come to the fore, and some leave you hanging. I am so grateful to my immediate close friends and family who rallied and made sure my family and I were OK. The same can be said of true friends in my network, people who have taken time to look beneath the surface and see what lies there.
Although I can say I am more at peace with myself, I remain conflicted to some degree about backing off the network. I haven’t put my hand up this year to present at conferences, and I have to admit to feeling a degree of performance anxiety when I see others pushing themselves out there. It is my dream to live this work, to find a way to do it all the time, not just part of my time.
So, I will remain connected, and to some extent, conflicted. But I will do so knowing that it is not at the expense of the relationships that matter most.
I’m presenting at a Commerce teacher’s conference (Comview) next week, about social media and its impact on business today. Whenever I plan a presentation, it never ceases to amaze me how you seem to constantly find yourself immersed in terrific content that is so pertinent to your subject matter. This presentation from Leslie Bradshaw, one of the new wunderkinds of Data Visualisation, and co-founder of JESS3, is just such an example. I am certainly going to be mining this data for my presentation next week.
Be sure to view this presentation, and perhaps share the following quote with your Math’s teachers;
“Math majors, rejoice. Businesses are going to need tens of thousands of you in the coming years as companies grapple with a growing mountain of data.”
Steve Lohr – New York Times.
Data mining and the art of data visualisation are proving to be key jobs that will be in increasingly high demand in our socially connected and evolving world. The founders of JESS3, Jesse Thomas and Leslie Bradshaw are onto a good thing. (Got any openings for a highly enthusiastic teacher from Australia who loves what you do. ; ) )
Now this made me smile. Charlie Todd, who heads up Improveverywhere, was married recently. In true Improveverywhere form, his wedding ceremony became part of his ‘we cause scenes’ movement. His bride was in on the act, being an improveverywhere member too. What a lovely way to make your wedding just that bit more memorable!
I’ve travelled a bit in the last few years, and have never really felt the effects of jetlag. Most of the time I’ve been able to correct my sleep patterns within a couple of days and get back on track. Not this week. After returning home from Italy early last Saturday morning (hence the no School’s out Friday last week – first time ever!), I’ve been struggling to get back to feeling like a normal person. It’s been compounded by a head cold I picked up while in Assisi, and a bit of a trying time on the work front. Hopefully I can get myself back into the swing of things this weekend. I’m supposed to submit slides for a conference I’m presenting at the week after next, so things better improve otherwise those conference organisers are going to be a tad unhappy with me!
I hope your weekend sees you relaxing and making the most of time spent with family and friends. I best head to bed to attempt to get myself back to the time zone I live in!
I’ve been meaning to post here about the trip I am currently taking through Italy with students from my school, but I underestimated the pitifully poor wifi reception I have been struggling with, and my total exhaustion at the end of each day!
I have been writing a blog for family and friends of the students I am traveling with, and it gives you a pretty good overview of what I’ve been up to. In two words – A LOT.
Before you start to say anything, I know it’s not Friday. Yes, my time zones are all over the place right now, but I do know that it is Saturday pretty much everywhere in the world right now. I was too exhausted last night here in Florence to get this post happening, and even now I just know it’s not going to work the way I want it to using this BlogPress app.
I can’t seem to grab any embed code for a YouTube video using this iPad, so you’re going t have to follow a link today. This is a very funny Carlsberg ad that’s also a study in human behavior.
Have a great weekend everyone. I’m going to be spending it in Assisi. If I get a chance before we have to leave, I’ll get a post up telling you of my time in Italy to date.
If you read my School’s out Friday post, then you’ll know that I’m in Venice on a school camp. It sure beats the kind of school camps I participated in when I was a student. I have fond memories of my time at Glemaggie in Gippsland, but it kind of pales into insignificance in comparison to the experience these kids are having.
I’m traveling with a wifi only iPad 2, and I’m struggling a bit without a whole lot of Internet access. We’ve not yet had an opportunity to get a data roaming sim card for my phone, so I’m confined to the lobby of our hotel to get anything out on the web. I’m writing a blog for our parents so that they know how things are going, and it’s great to see them leaving comments for their children already. It really does help parents feel at ease about their kids being so far away when they can see photos showing them smiling and obviously happy.
Venice doesn’t seem to have wifi hotspots. Any networks I’ve seen pop up without a lock all require a log in. I have seen a few tourists wandering around with iPads in hand, and I’ve been using the one I have to take photos of the group, because they are then really easy to insert into a post using the BlogPress app. If you ever us it, remember to save your posts as you go along. There’s nothing worse than writing a whole slab and then finding it crashes and you lose everything and have to start again.
Back to Venice though. It’s a beautiful city, without any doubt. It’s a constant reminder of the generations that came before us, and you do start to wonder how it is that the architecture has remained intact. Today we visited the Doge’s Palace and the students were impressed with the opulence represented in the huge council chambers. They were then confronted with the cells that formed the prison system of the time, and pondered how people must have felt when they crossed the bridge of sighs to meet their fate.
In the afternoon we visited the Accademia, and took in our fair share of religious inspired art work. After a morning in the Doge’s Palace, they were a bit over it, and we caught the vaporetto back to our accommodation. It’s very interesting waiting for a boat instead of a bus!
The Piazza San Marco is a sight to behold. It’s familiar because it features in so many movies, but much more impressive in the flesh, so to speak!
Another full day in Venice tomorrow, then off to Florence for four days, before we go on to Assisi and then Rome. Interesting times ahead!
No funny video tonight. I’m on a bus, headed for the airport, to board a plane with students from my school bound for Italy! So please excuse my hiatus from my usual posts as I become a travel blogger for the next two weeks.
Feel free to live vicariously through me as I recount my experiences through Venice, Florence, Assisi and Rome. I hope you can leave a comment or two and remind me of home and my network.
Enjoy your weekend. I’ll be in Venice in 30 hours or so and ready to soak up the sights. : )
You really just have to take the time to watch this video in its entirety. This kayaker has an amazing encounter with a Blue Whale, and his decision to peer under the water to capture images of this mammoth creature lunge feeding is bravery beyond my capability. My heart was pounding just watching this footage, heaven only knows what levels of adrenalin must have been charging through this guy’s body. That’s the intimidating thing about the ocean as far as I’m concerned. All looks well on the surface, but you have no idea what is happening beneath you. For some, that kind of risk is exciting, for others, it’s a little beyond comprehension.
I like thinking about the complexities of the human condition, and how experiences pose different sorts of challenges based on the kind of person you are. I like how being a teacher gives you an opportunity to help students understand their capabilities, and I love it when I see inspiring teachers take students in directions they may have never contemplated for themselves. I’ve just returned from our school’s Speech Night celebrations, and I saw students who would never normally be involved, performing a percussion based routine that was a real highlight of the evening. The man who teaches them is brimming with enthusiasm for what he does, and you can see how it has rubbed off on these kids. It was a joyful moment, exactly the kind of thing you see happening in schools all the time when students are exposed to passionate people. Our Head Girl spoke of teachers with passion for what they do when she addressed the audience. It reminded me that we must never lose sight of the need to foster our love of what we do and share it with the young people we teach. It can make all the difference.
Hopefully, some hard work this weekend will make a difference to our home renovations that seem to have a life of their own. The washing machine packed it in last weekend, and the purchase of a front loader has seen 30 yr old shelves torn out and the need for a new storage system and a coat of paint. That, combined with the the ongoing back room plastering and paint job, means we’ll be busy, that’s for sure!
I hope your weekend sounds a little more exciting that the one heading my way. Make the most of it.
Do you know where good ideas come from? Well, according to Steven Johnson, the author of ‘Where good ideas come from‘, chance favours the connected mind. This RSA animation does a stellar job of visualising his ideas, and I liked how he identified the need for people to come together in spaces dedicated to conversation and the opportunity to discuss and dissect ideas. Sounds like the function of a library today to me. If we design libraries with this kind of thinking in mind, then we provide opportunities for connected minds to meet face to face.
I came across the following video from Derek Sivers this week, and it seems to me we could be using this as a prompt for some vigorous class discussion with our students. All too often I think we dismiss our ideas as trivial, unimportant, not worthy of sharing. But who knows the impact your tiny idea might have on someone else who has never considered it? Sharing has become such an important part of my life; for me it seems natural now to push my thinking out there. Sometimes I hesitate, but more often than not I just push that send or publish button and put it out there. Watch it and see if you can find a way to use it in a classroom.
Renovations will occupy most of my weekend I’m figuring. We’ve been working on our back room, and I’ll probably be making the cups of tea, providing the food, hauling some plaster board or wielding a paintbrush. Gee, I wish it was more fun that it sounds, but someone’s gotta do it. I should take a look at that linen closet too, because I managed to avoid cleaning it out last weekend!
We’ve experienced some stunning spring weather today in Melbourne – I’m just hoping it lasts through the weekend. Find some sunshine and soak in it if you can.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 